I once had a friend who’d tell me “you need meat,” when she thought I was getting too thin or when I was tired or sick or hungry. Food was the way she showed love. Meat was comfort food. Meatballs were the answer to many of life’s problems. She grew up with an Italian grandmother who started cooking dinner in the morning so she’d wake up to the smell of meatballs. Like quick little meat-y hugs, she’d grab a hot meatball straight from the baking sheet before it went into the gravy on her way out the door to school.
Over the years I’ve learned that no meatball is as good as mamma’s meatballs. And nonna’s meatballs surpass them all. No matter who your mamma or nonna is, their meatballs are the best.
As someone with zero Italian (or Swedish) blood, I seriously doubted my friend when, after handing her a fork with one of my crispy homemade meatballs not yet covered in sauce (sorry, gravy), she said with a twist in her smile…
“That’s a pretty good meatball.”
We were early enough in our relationship that I could’ve handed her a fork full of tofu and she would have politely eaten it and told me it was good. I haven’t seen that friend in a long time and I eat meat only occasionally now, usually when I think my iron’s low or I go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx for Italian food.
So, on the third day of my recent craving for meatballs, I decided to take a long walk and made an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side my goal.
I walked through Fort Tryon Park. It was spring. Yellow was everywhere. The forsythia was in bloom and daffodils lined the sidewalks. Trees limbs blushed pink and burgundy. The gardens were littered with dots of blue and purple buds. It’s almost time to cut back the heather.
I crossed the bridge over the parkway and walked towards the Hudson River. Dirt paths lined the bike paths where people walk to stay safe from bicyclists who constantly ring the bells on their handlebars. Families gathered around the little red lighthouse and took pictures.
People, rusty from winter, paired up for their first tennis game of the season. Fishermen sat by their poles on small rocky beaches, waiting for fish to bite.
I hoped I’d find a feather from one of the green parrots that live under the West Side Highway but I didn’t see the nests or the birds. I walked past men who sat next to speakers larger than their beach chairs. I walked past the old Fairway which is no longer there. Sleeping bags were piled near what used to be the entrance. I passed International House, where I had my first job out of college, and then past Grant’s Tomb, down into Riverside Park where I’d walked almost daily when I lived on the Upper West Side. Walking there no longer makes me nostalgic. It was a long time ago that I’d lived there. So much has changed. A lot has stayed the same.
I saw a few former neighbors and didn’t say hello though we recognized one another in the distant way you recognize someone that you either knew once or saw on Instagram. After 15,842 steps I was hungry and wanted meatballs not company.
I walked down 103rd Street, crossed Broadway, and went into Bosnio, an Italian restaurant where they speak with Piedmontese accent that I know from when I lived in Vigliano as a teenager. The menu has grown, but they still make pizza in a wood burning stove. There is more staff, but it’s still a place where the waiters let you take your time and look you in the eye when they talk to you and say things like “of course,” “whatever you like,” “take your time,” and throw in an Italian word or two and aren’t doing it for show.
“Polpetto al sugo and a glass of Montepulciano please.”
I ate my meatballs slowly, sopping up the sauce (or gravy) with fresh bread, taking sips of wine between each mouthful. I relaxed and stayed a while, feeling cared for like I was with family.
Here’s to delicious moments!
Warmly,
Tiffany
For three days I wanted meatballs.
Such a vivid memoir! Beautiful.